Larry Bird, Bill Russell, Michael Jordan, and countless other NBA all-stars all have attributed their successes to knowing “not where the ball is, but where the ball is going to be.” In business, the same phenomenon has rewarded those who have spotted or even created trends.

Amazon’s success has come because Jeff Bezos was able to visualize a future of expanded online shopping, and created a platform where transactions are enabled. Steve Jobs was perhaps the most forward-thinking CEO in recent history, launching both the personal computer and smart phone industries.

Failing to concentrate on where things are going while putting all of one’s eggs in a basket based on the present (where things are) typically has dire consequences for those who would pick only low-hanging fruit.

Ken Olsen, the brilliant engineer who founded the Digital Equipment Corporation (DEC) is perhaps the poster child for failing to see the future after a highly successful career as an engineer and entrepreneur. It is Olsen who in 1977 said brashly that “there is no reason for any individual to have a computer in his home.”

Today, the Digital Equipment Company does not exist and Apple just became the world’s first company to have a trillion-dollar valuation. What separates these two stories is that one founder knew where the world was going and the other was content to rely on the status quo. Regional economies have faced a similar dilemma: choosing to boldly take actions to pave the way for the world of the future, or choosing to rest on their laurels.

Last year, CVEP introduced a video called “Coachella Valley 2050” about what our future may become if the building blocks of the future such as high speed internet, world-class education, and a vibrant local investment community are established. Since then we have seen some improvements in local bandwidth and there are plans to expand the CSUSB-Palm Desert Campus into a comprehensive, four-year university with STEM (science, technology, engineering, and mathematics) programs. The College of the Desert is expanding into Palm Springs and doubling the size of the Indio campus. Local investments have even begun trickling into some of the Palm Springs iHub companies. The ball is moving in the right direction.

In the spring of 2019 there will be a digital iHub launched in Palm Desert with close proximity to the CSU campus. The Palm Desert iHub will concentrate on technology companies that are endeavoring to serve the job creating engines of the future. Some of these fields are cyber security, IOT (internet of things), blockchain technology, 5G and other businesses that require state of the art bandwidth and modern development tools to function. The Palm Desert iHub will have these tools in place by virtue of a partnership with CSU and the success of iHub company Seco Systems in the IOT space. The mission of the Palm Desert iHub will be to inspire the creation of businesses that our region lacks, paving the way for a better future and insulating us from coming job losses due to automation.

This year’s CVEP Economic Summit will focus on where the world is going. Whether Steve Jobs knew calculus or not, he certainly practiced the art of knowing where things are going much better than the MIT-educated engineer, Ken Olsen. Knowing where things are going is a lesson straight from calculus. It can be intuitive or it can be calculated, but understanding the velocity and acceleration of change is the most important necessary condition to be at the forefront of solving today’s problems.